As most of you all know, iMountain.com mostly utilizes Opteron processors for their energy efficiency and high performance.

Well we’re psyched up for AMD’s newest offering of 6 core processors code-named “Istanbul”.  Based on their latest 45 nanometer design, these processors promise to be fast and most importantly, energy-efficient.   These new 6 core chips promise to increase performance by 35% per watt consumption compared to previous generation chips.

Another performance enhancing feature will be “HT Assist” which sort of indexes the contents of the various CPU’s so that data can be interchanged quickly and efficiently.

Cray, famous for its supercomputers, has also announced that the Cray XT5m will be using these new Opteron 6 Core chips at the core of its supercomputing platform.

Although we won’t be using any Cray Supercomputers, we can’t wait to get our hands on some of these 6-cores to build a 48 Core server.

We were about to go and purchase specific Socket F/1207 heatsinks and fans when we noticed the AMD Opteron 1st Generation Socket 940 Opteron heatsink mounting patterns looked extremely similar.

We did some precise measurements on the heatsink/backplates and lo and behold, the mounting pitches are exactly identical at “3.5″.   The other consideration is the thermal envelope of the new chips versus the old socket 940 chips and that isn’t an issue.    Socket F also came out with a 4.1″ mounting pitch (which is NOT compatible with Socket 940 heatsinks) but it is pretty rare…only motherboard we know of that uses the odd 4.1″ mounting pitch is the Tyan S2912G2NR.

So, YES, you can use most of the Socket 940 CPU’s with the newer Opteron Socket F/Socket 1207 as their mounting, thermal envelope and pitch are virtually identical.  Just make sure you use a high quality fan, as this is usually the PC component that breaks down first.

By re-using these high quality copper heatsinks instead of throwing them out, we’ll be recycling a ton of copper!